A prominent Ukrainian war tracker said on Monday that Russia suffered a net monthly territorial loss for the first time since 2023, when Kyiv launched its major counterpush.
DeepState UA, an open-source intelligence tracker widely used by Ukrainians and analysts to monitor the front lines, said Moscow had gained 14 square kilometers, or about 5.4 square miles, in May.
The volunteer organization delayed releasing information about Ukraine’s advances for the full month, citing security reasons. But the group said it was “ready to declare” that the final tally would show that Russia had lost ground.
That’s despite Russia launching more frequent attacks on Ukrainian positions, with over 7,000 recorded assaults in May amounting to a 37.5% monthly increase, it added.
Ukraine’s defense ministry cited a similar figure in a statement on Monday, saying that it had counted 7,008 combat encounters on the front lines in May, up from 5,085 in April.
Ukraine’s first net gains since 2023
DeepState’s statement is one of several recent analyses that say Russia’s advance is slowing significantly and that territorial gains, as of late spring this year, are starting to turn in Kyiv’s favor.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, recorded a net loss of 44.78 square miles for Russia in April.
The organization measures such progress differently from DeepState, tracking the land that the Kremlin decisively controls. That means its tally does not factor in contested areas or territory that Russian troops are still infiltrating.
Per that approach, the think tank said on Monday that it recorded a further net loss of 108 square miles for Russia in May.
Conversely, Russia had, in prior months, sometimes taken hundreds of square miles of territory in several weeks. Its fastest advance saw it claim a reported 280 square miles in November 2024 alone.
A swing back in Ukraine’s favor would mark the first time Kyiv has reclaimed territory overall since the summer of 2023, when it mounted a major offensive in the east and south with NATO equipment.
The 2023 effort was its third significant counterpush against Russia’s hold on Ukrainian territories, following Kyiv’s forces liberating large swaths of Kherson and Kharkiv the year before.
Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images
But the offensive failed to achieve the same success, with Ukraine regaining only about 150 square miles of territory. The front lines soon turned largely stagnant — each year, Russia gained about 1% to 1.5% of Ukraine’s total land area, which is about 233,032 square miles.
Better commanders and new drone strikes
In its Monday update, DeepState attributed Russia’s recent losses partially to Ukraine putting capable commanders in higher positions under the new Ukrainian defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, who’s been running the war effort since January.
The ISW also said on Sunday that some of Ukraine’s success was due to Kyiv conducting more mid-range drone strikes, at distances of about 30 to 50 miles, on Russian logistics hubs and operations.
The UK’s defense ministry echoed the sentiment in an intelligence update on Monday, highlighting Ukraine’s recent drone strikes in Russia’s transportation operations in the rear.
